Asbestos Fundamentals: A 1963 Primer to Understand History

Last week, my Blog addressed a 148 page dynamo book originally written in German by Hans Berger and then translated in 1966 to English by Professor Ralph Oesper of the University of Cincinnati on the historical use of asbestos in plastics and rubbers. Today, we move back three years to 1963 and we broaden the asbestos discussion by using those authors’ book entitled Asbestos Fundamentals. This book is only 170 pages but is so packed with history that the selling price on the eBay or Amazon tends to run up to $700, https://www.ebay.com/itm/362872812918?hash=item547ce7b576:g:gZEAAOSwDk5UDku6. My library is lucky enough to include two copies, one to keep and the other to lend to people searching for information.

For people looking for state of the art warnings or asbestos related health concerns in 1963, Asbestos Fundamentals will not provide any information or comfort. Rather, the book is best used by people researching historical uses that are otherwise difficult to locate.

To start it off, let’s look at the Preface and Forward. These explain why the book was written and its intended audience.

Let’s now move to the Table of Contents. As you can see, this book touches on just about all historical information and uses.

For those really digging into the history, the following pages laying out the chronological factual background for asbestos makes following along fairly simple.

When I am doing a “deep dig” into asbestos history, I combine this book with the Mineral Yearbook publications for that era, https://theasbestosblog.com/?p=3775, to typically get me going in the right direction. In tandem, they provide a good starting road map.

Need some help or just want to talk on how to discuss asbestos history? Need to add in health related issues and the various materials showing potential instructions, warnings, and danger notices? Please email me at TheAsbestosBlog@gmail.com or leave me a comment.